UX News
A look at what's going on in the field of user experience.
Instagram’s Latest Update Shows What Good UX Communication Looks Like
, UX Planet - Medium
How transparency and timing turned a risky redesign into a smooth experienceInstagram’s latest navigation update isn’t just a feature change; it’s a lesson in how to communicate design changes without frustrating millions of users.
If you’ve been using Instagram for a while, you know this isn’t how they used to do things. In the past, updates just appeared. You’d open the app one morning and the navigation bar was different, buttons were rearranged, and muscle memory went out the window.
Daily UX Writing Challenge: Day 1
, UX Planet - Medium
A UX writing exercise on crafting clear UI messages for travelers during unexpected flight cancellations.I signed up for the Daily UX Writing Challenge, a 15-day exercise to practice writing copy for various scenarios and interfaces.
Over the next couple of weeks, I’ll be sharing the challenges, my thought process, and the final UX writing for each challenge.
Intuitive Interfaces: What Actually Makes Them Clear
, UX Planet - Medium
Removing roadblocks on the user’s way to understanding your productPartners page for the JoyJam music platform by OutcrowdExpectation: Came, saw, conquered.
Reality: Logged in, got confused, left.
Interactive, Intelligent, and Integrated: The New Design System Paradigm
, UX Planet - Medium
Here is a fun teaser from Figma: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bozENeOTHVoFor years, we’ve preached the gospel of the design system as the “single source of truth.” We built libraries, evangelised tokens, and perfected our handoffs. However, despite all our efforts, the system often remained just that: a library. It was a meticulously organised collection of design assets that lived next to the real product, a reference file that designers owned and everyone else chased.
That paradigm is now obsolete.The 2025 announcements from Figma’s Config and Schema events signal a fundamental shift. The “single source of truth” is no longer a passive file we consult; it’s an active engine we build with. This new paradigm is built on three pillars: the system is now interactive, intelligent, and integrated.
Can technology fix voting?
, UX Collective - Medium
What impact does digitization of electoral process actually have?Image of a hand dropping a ballot inside of a computerThe mayoral election is around the corner in my hometown of Montreal, so I wanted to confirm whether I was registered to vote at my current address. What I naively assumed would be a simple task turned out to require a trip to a local community centre. I gave my name, they flipped through a binder, and gave me the thumbs up within 3 seconds of arriving. It felt like the ultimate “this could have been an email” moment and I lost two hours of my day confirming something I should’ve been able to check online in those 3 seconds.
Technology isn’t a silver bullet, and I’m far from a techno-optimist, but it can be a powerful vector for improvement. When designed carefully, it can increase accessibility, surface critical information, maybe even make it easier for people to engage civically in this context. For a long time, I assumed the main reason we hadn’t digitized more of the democratic process was good old-fashioned bureaucracy, a sluggish, underfunded government with outdated tools. I held a fundamental belief that if we simply made it easier to vote by letting people cast ballots from their phones or laptops more people would! More access = more engagement.
Building AI-driven workflows powered by Claude Code and other tools
, UX Collective - Medium
How agentic CLI tools extend Figma MCP and turn wireframes into production-ready prototypesI set out to explore how designers can use agentic CLI tools like Claude Code and Codex CLI to build AI-driven workflows that turn rough wireframes into production-ready prototypes reflecting a real codebase, not generic mockups. After testing both tools, the results revealed that a product designer can truly prototype with real code and the help of Figma MCP.
With a solid design system in place, design and code share the same language, AI becomes a reliable partner, accelerating exploration and producing maintainable, real-world prototypes that teams can carry forward.
How Estonia, AI gardens and plywood make designers prolific
, UX Collective - Medium
From Bauhaus flats to digital nations, creativity needs fertile ground
Recorded design walkthroughs: the best way to give your design a voice
, UX Collective - Medium
How to make design work understandable with teams in different time zones
A Report Card for the Net Promoter Score
, MeasuringU
Should you use the Net Promoter Score? Maybe, maybe not.
We’re not here to debate whether you should use it or not (and you may not have a choice). Instead, we want to use data (rather than opinions) to review and grade 13 claims made about the NPS, some from NPS critics and others from NPS proponents. At the end, we give a report card on how well these claims stand up against the evidence.
UX Practitioners’ Satisfaction with Pay Transparency
, MeasuringU
Is sharing pay information a good idea? What happens when companies share more about how they pay their people?
So-called pay transparency refers to company policies that encourage the sharing of compensation-related information, such as salary ranges, pay scales, and compensation structures. This information may be supplied to current employees, job candidates, or the public. If current trends continue, by 2026, about half of U.S. employees will work for companies that practice some degree of pay transparency.
